Keya Sarkar: Trading stitches

I have never understood why tourism in Santiniketan has not gone beyond hotels/lodges and a few basic food places. I thought that with the Tagore museum and the university, the brand recall that Rabindranath Tagore and Santiniketan still have globally, the place would be crawling with guides who would take tourists around and share Santiniketan's short but chequered history with them. Also, with increasing interest in indigenous craft, Santiniketan has much to flaunt. With weaving, batik, leather craft, embroidery thriving in and around the area, tourists could have much to savour.

But sadly, the university is now thinking of only upgrading the skills of some tout-like guides who hang around the museum and introducing an electric cart to take the elderly around the campus.

So recently, when a Thai ex-student of the arts department at the Visva Bharati University said she was bringing a group of Thai tourists to Santiniketan and asked whether I could arrange a kantha embroidery workshop for them, I found the idea interesting. I suggested expanding the workshop a little to give them some background before they started learning the technique.

We decided to give the visitors a brief history on the setting up of the university by Tagore, by roping in a friend who had researched the university's history. I said I would talk about the craft before the university was set up and how they were influenced by Tagore and his colleagues. And also how the area's craft repertoire had increased thanks to Tagore's importing of craft such as batik, pottery and paper making from the far east.

The Thai group comprised 10 enthusiasts. The fact that we held this interaction at my craft shop made it possible for them to appreciate the products more because they had just learnt about the processes.

They arrived at our workshop in the afternoon where my colleagues took them through the intricacies of kantha embroidery. Kantha, or quilts, are made from old sarees, the layers of which are held in place by decorative embroidery. In order to make sure that all the women can participate, the stitch is primarily a basic run stitch, many lines of which run parallel. The girls then weave thread through these tiny stitches to create different patterns.

I had thought that the Muslim girls who work with me, and for whom kantha is a traditional craft, would find it difficult to interact with the visitors, considering they only spoke Bengali. But soon the girls and the visitors had devised a language. After the visitors left, my colleagues filled me in on the numerous photos the visitors clicked and how they learned so fast - apparently their brains were like computers. It was a first-of-its-kind experience for the usually shy, sheltered Muslim girls and they had obviously enjoyed it.

We have done many such sessions since then for more Thai and Australian tourists. But it was only recently that I realised how Bengali (and completely non-entrepreneurial) I truly was. We had not charged any money for either my friend's talk or mine, thinking emotionally that our gain would be the visitors going back with a better understanding of Santiniketan's DNA. I had asked for a small sum for the kantha workshop, just to pay for the time of the Muslim girls.

But on the basis of this two-hour workshop, a whole new business venture had kicked off (a course fee of Rs 3,000) in Bangkok. The Thai student who had arranged the tour, showed us photographs of an "exotic Bengal kantha workshop" being held in Bangkok by one of the tour participants. The original teachers were much amused.